An Introduction To Word Order In Spanish

When you are learning a new language you have to learn many different aspects of the language. It is not enough to simply learn the pronunciations and word meanings. In order to really communicate in the new language you have to learn about grammar and sentence structure. You have to learn the rules.

 

A major aspect of Spanish that you will need to learn is word order. Word order in Spanish is a bit different than in English. You may think something should be one way because that is how you would say it in English, but in Spanish the rules are different. You must know this or when you communicate in Spanish you will not be saying what you think you are saying.

 

The good thing about Spanish word order is that it is flexible where in English word order is pretty strict. If you can master common word order rules then you should be able to communicate well enough. Eventually, as you speak Spanish more often you will start to master all the word order variations.

 

There are also some similarities that may help you to learn word order a little more quickly. In both English and Spanish, a typical sentence will have the noun proceeding the verb and then end with an object. Variations are often common, though, in both languages. In English changes to the sentence structure occur more in written communications. In Spanish the changes can be heard in everyday communications.

 

To help you gain a better understanding of Spanish word order it can help to learn from examples. By studying common word orders you can begin to pick them up and memorize them. The following will help to explain common sentence structures and word order for particular types of sentences.

 

Statements

 

There are many common word order structures for a statement in Spanish. The first is the standard subject-verb-object structure. The second is a subject followed by a verb with no object. It is the third that can be tricky. It is structured with subject-object-pronoun-verb. There are three other tricky sentence structures for a statement. They include the verb-noun structure, the object-verb-noun structure and the adverb-verb-noun structure.

 

Questions

 

Questions in Spanish are often shortened. They are simply devised by using a question word followed by the verb and then subject. Sometimes questions can be formed by using a question word only.

 

Exclamation

 

Like a question, an exclamatory sentence is shortened and uses an exclamatory word, then an adjective, verb and subject. Also like a question sometimes an exclamation can be just an exclamatory word.

 

Command

 

Commands are most often just the verb alone. Sometimes the pronoun will follow the verb.

 

Besides these common sentence types, you will find other word orders in Spanish are different from English. For example, when using adjectives, in some cases the adjective will follow the word it is modifying. In English adjectives come before the noun they are modifying. It is small things like this that are probably going to throw you the most. However, in time and through practice you should be able to master Spanish word order rules.

 

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